Tami Hoag - Down the Darkest Road

“You bastard!” She spat the words at him, grabbing for the camera, catching hold of the strap. “How dare you! How dare you look at my daughter! You filthy rotten son of bitch!”

Ballencoa stumbled backward another few steps, trying to push her away, ducking his head as the camera strap pulled hard against his neck.

“Crazy bitch!” he shouted.

“I’ll show you crazy, you fucking pervert!”

Lauren fought and kicked and yanked on the camera strap as Ballencoa tried to pull away from her. Suddenly the strap gave way and she went stumbling backward, tripping, falling, landing hard on the ground. Ballencoa’s camera came with her, bouncing off the hard surface of the tennis court, the expensive lens breaking free of the body of the camera.

“Fucking bitch!” Ballencoa shouted, scrambling for the camera.

Lauren pushed to her feet with the intent of kicking either him or the camera, she didn’t care which. But as she went to move forward she was pulled back, a man’s arms banding around her from behind.

Ballencoa yanked his ruined camera up by its broken strap, shouting, “Call the police! I want her arrested!”

Lauren stared at him, at the rage on his face as he gathered up the camera. It was the first time she had ever seen him express an emotion of any kind. Over a camera. He had taken her daughter, had probably killed her, and he wanted her arrested for breaking his fucking camera.

“Mommy! Oh my God!”

Leah’s voice turned her head. Her daughter and Wendy came running, eyes wide with shock.

Ballencoa came toward her, red-faced, thrusting a finger at her. “You’re going to jail, you crazy bitch!”

The man who had caught hold of Lauren let her go and put himself between her and Ballencoa. Greg Hewitt.

He stiff-armed Ballencoa with a hand to the chest, and shouted in his face. “Back off! Back off!”

“She’s crazy!” Ballencoa shouted. “She attacked me!”

“Calm down!” Hewitt shouted back.

Lauren turned to her daughter.

“Mommy! Oh my God!” Leah said again. There were tears in her eyes. Her face was white as chalk.

Lauren caught her by the arms. “It’s all right,” she said stupidly. Of course it wasn’t all right. She could see a sheriff’s deputy hustling toward the scene of the melee.

Wendy’s mother, Sara, came running across the tennis court. “What’s going on? What’s happening?”

“That woman attacked me!” Ballencoa said loudly to the deputy.

Sara Morgan looked from him to Lauren with shock.

“Can you please take care of Leah?” Lauren asked her. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to miss dinner.”

The deputy came up to her, stone-faced. “Ma’am, can I have a word with you?”

Lauren ignored him.

“Of course,” Sara Morgan said, still confused. “Don’t worry about her.”

Leah was crying. “Are they taking you to jail? Oh my God! Mommy, no!”

Lauren pulled her close for a quick hug. “It’s all right, honey. It’ll be fine,” she said, managing to sound much calmer than she was. “I’ll have to go and explain what happened, that’s all. Don’t worry about it. You go with Mrs. Morgan and Wendy. I’ll pick you up later.”

The deputy put a hand on her arm. “Ma’am?”

Lauren shook him off with a dirty look. “Take your hands off me. I want to speak to Detective Mendez as soon as possible.”

“Mommy, your purse,” Leah said, holding the bag out to her. “You dropped it.”

Lauren looked at her handbag, thinking of the Walther in its special pocket and the fact that she had no license to carry the gun.

“You keep it for me, sweetheart,” she said. “I won’t be needing it.”

38

“She did what?” Mendez said, incredulous.

“She assaulted a man at the sports complex,” the deputy explained. “Then she demanded to see you.”

The page had come just as he had been finishing his dinner with Vince and Anne and their kids. Lauren Lawton had been brought in on assault charges. Intrigued, Vince had invited himself along on the ride to the SO. They stood now in the hall outside the interview rooms.

“Did you tell her she’s being charged with anything?” Mendez asked.

“No.”

“Did you read her her rights?”

“No. The whole scene was kind of crazy, and then she asked to speak to you— demanded to speak to you is more like it—and she was going on about how the guy is some kind of child predator,” the deputy said. “And that he had kidnapped her daughter.”

“Roland Ballencoa?” Mendez said. “She assaulted Roland Ballencoa ?”

The deputy nodded. “Yeah, that’s his name. And he was screaming that she attacked him and busted his camera and he wants to press charges and he demands to see the sheriff. I thought the best thing would be to bring them both in here and sort it out.”

“Good call,” Mendez said.

“He’s in one with Detective Trammell. She’s in two. They’re all yours,” the deputy said, raising his hands in surrender as he backed away down the hall. “Good luck.”

Vince tipped his head in the direction of the break room on the opposite side of the hall. “I’ll go watch the show.”

Mendez took a deep breath and let it out, then turned the doorknob and went into interview room two. Lauren was pacing at the back wall of the tiny white room, looking like she was physically trying to hold herself together, her arms banded tight around her chest, her shoulders hunched. She looked small and fragile, and like somebody had taken a couple of good swings at her. There was an angry red abrasion on her cheek, and the knuckles of one hand were scraped and bloody. Her linen pants were torn at the knee on one leg.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“No. No, I’m not fucking all right!” she snapped, lashing out at him like a wounded wild animal trapped in a cage. “And don’t tell me to sit down, because I don’t want to sit down! And don’t tell me to calm down, because I don’t want to calm down. I am not all right!”

“Okay,” Mendez said calmly. He sat down on the edge of the small table that was situated to one side of the room. “You look like somebody beat you up. Do I need to take you to the ER ?”

“No.”

“How did you get hurt?”

“I fell.”

“While you were assaulting Roland Ballencoa?”

She looked at him sharply and with suspicion. “Do I need an attorney?”

“I haven’t read you your rights,” he said. “You haven’t been charged with anything. This isn’t an official interview. It’s not being recorded. A good lawyer could make an argument down the road that nothing you tell me now would be admissible against you. On top of that, I’m on suspension, so I’m not even supposed to be here. It’s like this isn’t even happening.”

She laughed at that, although there was no humor in the sound. “I wish that were true.”

The tremor of desperation in her voice cut at his heart. He knew she had no one—that she believed she had no one—on her side. He was close enough to reach out and touch her, but he kept his hands to himself. Her fucking coward of a husband should have been there to put his arms around her and hold her. She needed someone to take the burden off her shoulders before she collapsed beneath the weight of it.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” he asked softly.

She was close to tears. He could hear it in the way her breath hitched as she inhaled. She hugged herself tighter.

“He was taking pictures of Leah,” she said. She paused to fight with the emotions that rose up inside her. “She was having a tennis lesson with her friend . . . He was watching them . . . He was taking pictures of them . . . When I saw him, he looked right at me and kept taking pictures.”